Friday, June 6, 2014

Natgrid Must Be An Accountable Project Says Praveen Dalal

Even after more than 5 years of launch of the
Natgrid
project of India, the same has remained a non starter
only. Despite spending many crore upon this crucial project, it has
remained a failure only. There is no doubt that the successful
implementation of Natgrid project depends upon numerous factors that
are techno legal in nature. According to experts in this field, the
Natgrid project of India needs techno
legal implementation to be successful. Till now the
Natgrid project has failed to address both technological and legal
issues pertaining to the project.

Media reports have confirmed that Raghu Raman, the
former CEO of Natgrid, would not be able to continue with the project
as his contractual term has come to an end. Indian government is
considering a new CEO for the Natgrid project. Obviously, the
policies regarding Natgrid would also change and so would be its
implementation strategy.

So what are the factors that have resulted in the
failure of Natgrid project of India? According to Praveen
Dalal, managing partner of New Delhi based law firm
Perry4Law
and leading techno legal expert of Asia, NATGRID is an essential
requirement for robust and effective intelligence agencies and law
enforcement functions in India. The only requirement is to ensure
that its abuses can be anticipated, prevented and remedied.

However, NATGRID cannot survive in the absence of
“Political Will” to make it an effective and responsible tool.
With the benefits of NATGRID come the issues of accountability and
fairness in its operation. India must formulate adequate “Safeguards”
before making NATGRID functional. The NATGRID project must not die
like the other projects handled by India from time to time, opines
Dalal. It seems the Natgrid project lacked all these attribute and
this is the reason why it failed.

Lack of accountability and transparency are also
responsible for poor intelligence related project implementations in
India. According to Dalal “the Intelligence Agencies of India Need
Parliamentary
Oversight and the Intelligence Infrastructure of India
needs Transparency
and Strengthening. There should not be any “Legal
Immunity” to Intelligence Agencies of India in the
absence of Parliamentary Oversight and the system of “Using
Executive Orders” to confer “Legitimacy” upon Intelligence
Agencies must be abandoned as soon as possible by the Government.

There are crucial policy and legal issues of Natgrid
project that previous government failed to notice. In fact, from the
working of the previous government it is clear that it never wished
to confer any legitimacy to law enforcement and intelligence agencies
of India. This must be avoided by the BJP led government.

As per the current home ministry’s proposal,
Natgrid will connect data providing organisations and users besides
developing a legal structure through which information can be
accessed by the law enforcement agencies. So there are some hints
towards making Natgrid accountable towards Indian parliament. But
only time will tell how Natgrid project would be handled by the new
government.